From the Lakes of Killarney to the Golden Horn. Field Henry Martyn

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ story: who she was, and how she came there, and how she lived. She made her own soup, she said, and had put up some pretty muslin curtains, and had a tiny bit of a stove, and so got along very nicely. This communicativeness is not confined to the inmates of hospitals. It is a national trait, which makes us love a people that give us their confidence so freely.

      I might add many other amiable traits, which give a great charm to the social life of the French, and fill their homes with brightness and sunshine.

      But of course there is another side to the picture. There is lightning in the beautiful cloud, and sometimes the thunder breaks fearfully over this devoted city. I do not refer to great public calamities, such as war and siege, bringing "battle, and murder, and sudden death," but to those daily tragedies, which are enacted in a great city, which the world never hears of, where men and women drop out of existence, as one and disappear from view, and the ocean rolls over them, burying the story of their unhappy lives and their wretched end. Something of this darker shading to bright and gay Paris, one may discover who is curious in such matters. There is a kind of fascination which sometimes lures me to search out that which is sombre and tragic in human life and in history. So I have been to the Prison de la Roquette, over which is an inscription which might be written over the gates of hell: Depôt des Condamnés. Here the condemned are placed before they are led to death, and in the open space in front take place all the executions in Paris. Look you at those five stones deep set in the pavement, on which are planted the posts of the Guillotine! Over that in the centre hangs the fatal knife, which descends on the neck of the victim, whose head rolls into the basket below.

      "Sinks into the waves with bubbling groan,"

      But prisons are not peculiar to Paris, and probably quite as many executions have been witnessed in front of Newgate, in London. But that which gives a peculiar and sadder interest to this spot, is that here took place one of the most terrible tragedies even in French history – the massacre of the hostages in the days of the Commune. In that prison yard the venerable Archbishop of Paris was shot, with others who bore honored names. No greater atrocity was enacted even in the Reign of Terror. There fiends in human shape, with hearts as hard as the stones of the street, butchered old age. In another quarter of Paris, on the heights of Montmartre, the enraged populace shot down two brave generals – Lecompte and Clement-Thomas. I put my hand into the very holes made in the wall of a house by the murderous balls. Such cowardly assassinations, occurring more than once in French history, reveal a trait of character not quite so amiable as some that I have noticed. They show that the polite and polished Frenchman may be so aroused as to be turned into a wild beast, and give a color of reason to the savage remark of Voltaire – himself one of the race – that "a Frenchman was half monkey and half tiger."

      I will present but one other dark picture. I went one day, to the horror of my companion, to visit the Morgue, the receptacle of all the suicides in Paris, where their bodies are exposed that they may be recognized by friends. Of course some are brought here who die suddenly in the streets, and whose names are unknown. But the number of suicides is fearfully great. Bodies are constantly fished out of the Seine, of those who throw themselves from the numerous bridges. Others climb to the top of the Column in the Place Vendôme, or of that on the Place of the Bastille, or to the towers of Nôtre Dame, and throw themselves over the parapet, and their mangled bodies are picked up on the pavement below. Others find the fumes of charcoal an easier way to fall into "an eternal sleep." But thus, by one means or other, by pistol or by poison, by the tower or the river, almost every day has its victim. I think the exact statistics show more than one suicide a day throughout the year. When I was at the Morgue there were two bodies stretched out stark and cold – a man and a woman, both young. I looked at them with very sad reflections. If those poor lips could but speak, what tragedies they might tell! Who knows what hard battle of life they had to fight – what struggles wrung that manly breast, or what sorrow broke that woman's heart? Who was she?

      "Had she a father? had she a mother?

      Had she a sister? had she a brother?

      Or one dearer still than all other?"

      Perhaps she had led a life of shame, but all trace of passion was gone now:

      "Death had left on her

      Only the beautiful."

      And as I marked the rich tresses which hung down over her shoulders, I thought Jesus would not have disdained her if she had come to him as a penitent Magdalen, and with that flowing hair had wiped His sacred feet.

      I do not draw these sad pictures to point a moral against the French, as if they were sinners above all others, but I think this great number of suicides may be ascribed, in part at least, to the mercurial and excitable character of the people. They are easily elated and easily depressed; now rising to the height of joyous excitement, and now sinking to the depths of despair. And when these darker moods come on, what so natural as that those who have not a strong religious feeling to restrain them, or to give them patience to bear their trials, should seek a quick relief in that calm rest which no rude waking shall ever disturb? If they had that faith in God, and a life to come, which is the only true consolation in all time of our trouble, in all time of our adversity, they would not so often rush to the grave, thinking to bury their sorrows in the silence of the tomb.

      Thus musing on the lights and shadows of Paris, I turn away half in admiration and half in pity, but all in love. With all its shadows, it is a wonderful city, by far the greatest, except London, in the modern world, and the French are a wonderful people; and while I am not blind to their weaknesses, their vanity, their childish passion for military glory, yet "with all their faults I love them still." And I have written thus, not only from a feeling of love for Paris from personal associations, but from a sense of justice, believing that the harsh judgment often pronounced upon it is hasty and mistaken. All such sweeping declarations are sure to be wrong. No doubt the elements of good and evil are mingled here in large proportions, and act with great intensity, and sometimes with terrific results. But Frenchmen are not worse than other men, nor Paris worse than other cities. If it has some dark spots, it has many bright ones, in its ancient seats of learning and its noble institutions of charity. Taking them all together, they form a basis for a very kindly judgment. And I believe that He who from His throne in Heaven looks down upon all the dwellers upon earth, seeing that in the judgment of truth and of history this city is not utterly condemned, would say "Neither do I condemn thee: go and sin no more."

      CHAPTER IX.

      GOING ON A PILGRIMAGE

Geneva, July 12th.

      We have been on a pilgrimage. In coming to France, I had a great desire to visit one of those shrines which have become of late objects of such enthusiastic devotion, and attracted pilgrims from all parts of Europe, and even from America. In a former chapter I spoke of the Resurrection of France, referring to its material prosperity as restored since the war. There has been also a revival of religious fervor – call it superstition or fanaticism – which is quite remarkable. Those who have kept watch of events in the religious as well as in the political world, have observed a sudden access of zeal throughout Catholic Christendom. Whatever the cause, whether the "persecution," real or imaginary, of the Holy Father, or the heavy blows which the Church has received from the iron hand of Germany in its wars with Austria and France – the fact is evident that there has been a great increase of activity among the more devout Catholics – which shows itself in a spirit of propagandism, in "missions," which are a kind of revivals, and in pilgrimages to places which are regarded as having a peculiar sanctity.

      These pilgrimages are so utterly foreign to our American ideas, they appear so childish and ridiculous, that it seems impossible to speak of them with gravity. And yet there has been at least one of these pious expeditions from the United States (of which there was a long account in the New York papers), in which the pilgrims walked in procession down Broadway, and embarked with the blessing of our new American Cardinal. From England they have been quite frequent. Large numbers, СКАЧАТЬ